Prävalenz körperlicher Erkrankungen, Gesundheitsverhalten und Nutzung des Gesundheitssystems bei alleinstehenden wohnungslosen Männern: eine Querschnittsuntersuchung

Birgit Völlm (), Hinnerk Becker and Wilfried Kunstmann

International Journal of Public Health, 2004, vol. 49, issue 1, 42-50

Abstract: Prevalence of physical diseases, health behavior and health care utilization in single homeless men: a cross-sectional study Objective: The aim of this cross-sectional study was to establish the prevalence of physical diseases, the subjective evaluation of their own health and health care utilization in the actually homeless and a comparison group of formerly homeless. Methods: A representative sample of 82 homeless and 37 formerly homeless was studied. Instruments were a physical examination and a standardized interview. The latter included parts of the assessment of the German cardiovascular disease prevention study and the questionnaire “Funktionseinschränkungen” (functional impairments) by Potthoff (1982). Results: Disease prevalence was high. The main diagnoses fell within the categories of defective dental status (over 80%), ophthalmologic diseases (over 60%) and diseases of the liver and musculoskeletal system (over 40% each). Morbidity in the formerly homeless was even higher. In both groups the subjective evalution of their own health was unrealistically positive. Risk factors for cardiovascular diseases were high. Health care utilization was mainly acute. Conclusions: The medical care of the homeless in standard medical services is insufficient and could be improved by especially tailored projects which should include education about risk factors. Formerly homeless continue to show high disease prevalence. Copyright Birkhäuser-Verlag Basel 2004

Keywords: Homeless; Cross-sectional study; Prevalence; Formerly homeless; Service utilisation; Subjective health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00038-003-3064-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ijphth:v:49:y:2004:i:1:p:42-50

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/00038

DOI: 10.1007/s00038-003-3064-9

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Thomas Kohlmann, Nino Künzli and Andrea Madarasova Geckova

More articles in International Journal of Public Health from Springer, Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().